


The Road We Choose Is Always Right

by pokey_jr



Series: Only Sequences Change [4]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: A little, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, light angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 20:32:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15421026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokey_jr/pseuds/pokey_jr
Summary: With a shake of your head you smile at him, then cast your gaze across the yard; he’s much too handsome to look at for an extended period of time. A moment later you’re startled, feeling his hand brush yours.**Connor reaches out, trying to understand, and help in his own way.





	The Road We Choose Is Always Right

It takes about twenty minutes for the adrenaline to wear off. By then you’ve stumbled out the back door of the condemned house, and have been sitting hunched over on the back porch. Enough time to start shivering in the biting cold, paralyzed, fingers starting to go numb. A few degrees above zero. Cold enough for your wool jacket to hardly make a difference, though you stuff your bare hands in the pockets anyway. The frigid air is making them sting.

Every time you try to take a deeper breath, something to steady and calm you, your chest seizes, and all you get is a shallow, piercing sensation, as if a hand has reached into your chest and squeezed your lungs.

You don’t know how long you’ve been out there when you hear the screen door creak open behind you. Connor has found you. Of course. Your crush on him would be a little easier to ignore if he didn’t follow you around like a puppy. Impossible to stay annoyed with him though, how could you when he looks so concerned.

“Are you alright, Detective?” He sits next to you on the top step, and tactfully makes no mention of the blemish in the snow a few feet away where you’d vomited.

“Yeah.” Even shaken as you are, you get that familiar lightness you feel being around him. A giddy flutter that makes you notice irrelevant, useless details about him, like the immaculate polish to his leather shoes, and the fact that his jeans are the perfect length, and damn but you’d like to undress him, piece by piece, because he would give you that rare smile he has when he’s delighted with your curiosity. _Focus._ “I’m sorry. I don’t know— that kind of stuff usually doesn’t get to me. I shouldn’t have walked out, it was unprofessional.”

“I understand. But there is no shame in reactions that are beyond your control. Sometimes I--” he hesitates, uncharacteristically, his LED flickering blue to yellow to red. He stares across the ramshackle, snow-covered backyard at nothing in particular, processing, but you prompt him before he resolves whatever hang up there was in his algorithm.

“You can feel shame?”

He blinks, then recalibrates his attention to you. “Not strictly speaking, no. But I have accessed descriptions of it, and witnessed it.”  
You watch him as he leans forward, elbows on his knees, and wrings his hands. Would he fuck you, if you asked? A completely inappropriate thought, in the moment, but easier to contemplate than what had brought you out here in the first place. Would he know how to bend you over, grip your waist, moan your name against your neck as he stroked into you. You take your hands out of your pockets to flex the stiffness away. “Well. I came up in the ‘suck it up with a straw and get over it’ school of Detroit police work. So.”

“Suck what up? The obstacle?” He turns his head to you for clarification. He’s perfected that look of innocent confusion, but you’re starting to be able to read him, and you catch when the corner of his mouth twitches up. 

With a shake of your head you smile at him, then cast your gaze across the yard; he’s much too handsome to look at for an extended period of time. A moment later you’re startled, feeling his hand brush yours. 

“Are you trying to hold my hand?” You don’t pull away.

“Detective, your core temperature has dropped to 96.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and is still falling. You’re at risk of hypothermia.” He doesn’t mention the other vital signs he must be sensing, including your elevated heart rate.

“I’m not—I’m fine. I’m not going back in there.”

“Alright,” he agrees, pressing his palm against yours. His hand is warm. Gently, reassuringly so. “I’ve already completed my analysis of the crime scene. If I may ask, what about it did you find so disturbing?”

You turn to him, bewildered. At his interest, and the fact he doesn’t _get it._

He elaborates, in his usual matter-of-fact tone. “Androids don’t feel pain. The ones in there who were… deformed… they wouldn’t have suffered.”

“Not physical pain? But they were mutilated. I mean—“ you break off again, feeling panic and bile rising in your chest. The ones in there had been tortured. Clear signs of trauma and abuse. Connor squeezes your hand, his thumb stroking and it’s such a small, unconscious gesture, yet so human. Still. Your breath comes out in puffs you can see. His doesn’t.

“Connor, what if it had been you?”

That gives him pause. He turns your hand over, still holding it, so you can see the back of his. It looks and feels real. Down to the pores, some wrinkles, veins under the skin.

Which disappears, in a ripple of fine particles. It makes a faint, almost electronic sound. Underneath he reveals the silverwhite plastic composite, completely smooth save for the delicate grooves delineating knuckles and phalanges. 

“I… serve a purpose.”

You scoot closer, shoulder to shoulder with him. His LED is yellow again, his eyebrows knit together. With your free hand you trace the lines on the plastic panels, so many jointed sections, so intricately designed to replicate what comes naturally to you. “Can you feel this?” To you it’s sweet, intimate, taboo, to him--

“My dermal receptors register a sensation, yes.”

“But you don’t know whether it feels good or not.”

“The programming doesn’t distinguish between good and bad. Only whether there’s any damage to systems or biocomponents.” He only stops fidgeting when trotting out rote answers like that one. Sure enough, he’s perfectly still. You press closer to him, leaning in, because when will you get this chance again?

A quarter appears in his free hand, he starts spinning it edgewise on his index finger. Hops it to his middle. No wobbles. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter.

“If it had been me I don’t know if I could have endured it. The ones still alive asked me to deactivate them.”

You lean your head on his shoulder, knowing he’s lying. ‘Kill’ was the word they’d used, you’d overheard part of the exchange earlier inside, at which point you’d quietly slipped out here. You could ask him. 

You don’t. You relax in his proximity, wondering if ‘soothe the detective’ is part of his program. “You can let go Connor. I’m okay now.”

He slips his hand out of yours, and gets to his feet. With a smile he holds his hand out again. 

“Come on, Detective. You’re too cold. Let me drive you home.”


End file.
